Is public broadcasting’s $445 million subsidy really a “tiny federal investment”?

posted at 6:05 pm on May 18, 2012 by Rob Bluey

NPR, PBS and other public broadcasting outlets are asking taxpayers to fork over $445 million in funding for the next fiscal year. But not if Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) and Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-CO) have anything to say about it.

The conservative lawmakers want to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the steward of the federal government’s “investment” in public radio and TV. Congress created CPB in 1967, and DeMint and Lamborn think it’s time to cut it off from the federal trough. Their move comes as the agency prepares to report to Congress how it could operate without a federal subsidy.

“While so many Americans are making sacrifices around the country to make ends meet, CPB appears unwilling to do the same,” DeMint and Lamborn wrote in a letter to Senate and House appropriators. “Now is the appropriate and necessary time for the government to end taxpayer subsidies for CPB.”

Liberals are fighting back to keep the money flowing. The special-interest group Free Press, which advocates for greater government control over media and the Internet, claims the federal subsidy is necessary to save public-broadcasting jobs.

This tiny federal investment is vital to helping support programming that commercial media won’t showcase and provides an important foundation for stations around the country to build on.

DeMint and Lamborn don’t consider it such a “tiny federal investment,” particularly given the rapid growth of public broadcasting’s federal subsidy in the past decade. Writing on DeMint’s new Pickpocket blog, Amanda Carpenter noted:

Even though media has become more accessible than ever, funding for CPB has exploded. Between 2001 and 2012, the CPB’s appropriated funding escalated by nearly 31 percent, from $340 million to $444.1 million.

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You know, one of these rich Republicans that the Democrats keep talking about should open up a chain of center-right “public broadcasting” stations under a different network and make NPR compete for that funding. Maybe call it APR (American Public Network). Have shows with things like AGW skeptics and responsible economists and interview government officials in states that have cut spending and balanced budgets.

What just chaps me, almost monthly psb has ‘we need money from viewers’? The only thing we watch on pbs is anitque roadshow. WHY do they do their fundraisers? I do NOT want to fund any station, radio or tv. If you can’t make it cry to those who have deep pockets to help you out, NOT THE TAXPAYERS! Spew your krap and if people love the daylights outta you, they will fund?
L

No NPR $. Or give equal to a conservative alternative, if that can’t be done then scrap NPR. The feds can’t just finance the lib side.

Is $445 million of no consequence? Well, yes, in comparison to the 68 BILLION dollars that was spent on “climate change activities” over the last 3 years.
You got to be kidding me… when we are about to go belly up bankrupt. “And what do we have to show for that 68 billion $” someone asked. There was a pause. It’s not clear that there is anything to point to. Just a complete huge massive waste of 68 billion $… where were the TParty conservatives on this? Stop all “climate change” spending.
There is nothing wrong with the climate, and CO2 has nothing to do with it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WK_WyvfcJyg

You know, one of these rich Republicans that the Democrats keep talking about should open up a chain of center-right “public broadcasting” stations under a different network and make NPR compete for that funding. Maybe call it APR (American Public Network). Have shows with things like AGW skeptics and responsible economists and interview government officials in states that have cut spending and balanced budgets.

crosspatch on May 18, 2012 at 6:13 PM

Very true. With FNC moving to the left, about the only representation conservatives have is talk radio.

Make a compromise with the Left: Let’s defund these media operations (let them survive on their own, and they will) and appropriate the $445 million to some other project, something that the Left and conservatives can agree upon. Maybe upgrading a veterans hospital or something.

It’s immoral that the government funds “independent” media that promotes bigger government. That happens in third world countries…it shouldn’t happen here.

Yeah, the beg-a-thons get to be tedious. Why do they need to do them? Stop hiring so much national high-priced talent and go with local talent / volunteers.

crosspatch on May 18, 2012 at 6:38 PM

Used to watch Norm Abram and Roy Underhill woodworking shows on PBS regularly. Would come in from the shop on Saturday afternoon and spend an hour snoozing/watching those shows. Then came the begathons. First time, I thought time was just delayed. It wasn’t so bad when this happened once a year. It later became a quarterly or even more frequent thing. To the point I no longer wasted my time even coming in to watch.

We need balance. Let’s see to it that every dollar that goes to CPB/NPR/PBS is matched to an array of conservative media outlets, like PJTV, GBTV, etc. Put the money there and the organizations will be put together. Free up the TV and radio bandwidth to match.

I listen to NPR a fair amount and I know that they coordinate with the Obama administration.

There was a story they did a few months ago that struck me as very out of place for NPR. There was a tiny number of people who couldn’t get some drug for their rare condition because there was no profit for the drug companies in making the drug. So NPR saturates their stations with this very tiny special interest story, completely out of the blue, during a time when the big issue of ObamaCare was on the front burner, and a few days later Obama just happens to issue an executive order to solve the problem. I forget what the solution was exactly but it involved the subjugation of drug companies.

Then weeks later I got the same sensation of an out of the blue story when NPR did a story advocating the banning of cell phones in cars. It used some incident that happened in Missouri a year prior as the main selling point. Then days later some Obama administration agency recommended the banning of cell phones in vehicles, and used the same old incident in their argument. In both instances, NPR was used by Obama to set the table so that his actions didn’t seem so out of the blue.

The very existence of government-funded programming at the federal level is a violation of the 1st Amendment. Every government-endorsed editorial decision to include something is a government decision to exclude something else. Censorship. Not practical to include everything. Ergo, the entire endeavor is disqualified. Except for a coupla-three hundred thousand to provision two positions to make PSAs on matters of public safety, funding is easily deleted. Live from Lincoln Center is not critical to public safety. Sayonara. Unfortunately, warping the Constitution for elite-friendly. politically promotable, media-endorsed, huggy-fuzzy programs is nothing new. Just a form of hi-brow vote-graft. No Libertarian I, but it’s not much of a stretch to imagine how better off the USA would be with just two exec branch agencies, Defense (to defend) and Commerce (to encourage).